Summary of #ASEchat 25th March 2013 (92) How can we support new subject leaders?

The chat mainly consisted of advice from the contributors to people who would be starting a new post. They could be split into thee main categories. A lot of advice was about building relationships, another strong theme was leadership and finally there were ideas about how to develop into the subject leader role.

The comments below will be a useful read for anyone preparing for a leadership role.

There was a theme about relationships:

Early in #asechat @gregtheseal said that a new subject leader would need to build relationships with the team and @bio_joe said make sure any internal candiate you beat to the job doesn’t become an enemy. @hrogerson tweeted in reply that a new post holder should talk to everyone in the department and be friendly. @MrsDrSarah said that it was important that new post holders be honest, but not brutal as the development of the team is important.

@KDWscience tweeted that never being too busy for your staff is an important characteristic in a new leader and @littlejenster comments that having a sense of humour and being able to listen were important too.

@DavidCumbers said that subject leaders should pick fights carefully. Which will need to be fought today, which can wait until the subject leader knows where their backup will come from. Along similar lines: @stanothermic tweeted that new subject leaders should know that they will have to say things that others won’t like.

@Mrcjhewitt tweeted another reason why relationships are important, he said that too many post holders leave team building until later, but although one person can make a difference, they can’t do everything.

Another strand about leadership:

@hrogerson said that new post holders should lead by example and be prepared to do what you ask others to do. @oboelizzy made the comments that a new post holder should focus on teaching and learning in the classroom.

@littlejaneyface said that new subject leaders should know how to prioritise, they may feel the need to change everything to make their mark, but this won’t be practical for the whole department.

@gregtheseal said that subject leaders should make sure that they are doing the things they are asking others to do. He also said that subject leaders should think about the purpose of their actions, for example, why collect data if you are not going to use it.

@IETFaraday tweeted that subject leaders should start every meeting with “this meeting will help learning by…” If you can’t say why, postpone the meeting until you can! @Bio_joe backed up this idea by saying that “sharing best practice” should be a standing item on the agenda.

@julesgordon1 said that TLR holders should talk to each other before the meeting so they have the same vision and Heads of Faculty can share the delivery with the other post holders.

@damianainscough tweeted that new subject leaders should know their success criteria in terms of student outcomes. (Improve “T+L” and similar is not specific enough).

@IETFaraday said that new post holders should be prepared to challenge both upwards and downwards: Stand up for your staff, but also stand up for whole school priorities

@Mrcjhewitt said that subject leaders can build time and expertise if they remember you lead a team...not do everything themselves; they should value and trust others.

@Bio_Joe gave some other advice about building relationships: Find out what everyone's motivations are in the team. Why are they a teacher? What do they want to do? What interests do they have?

And some ideas about how new subject leaders can be developed:

@ashl3ylaw explained that new subject leaders can be supported by having a mentor, who is someone in a similar role with more experience. The two will meet regularly for discussions. @A_Weatherall somed up the support in a word: “mentoring”. 

@DavidCumbers suggested that new subject leaders should meet the rest of the school in the staffroom, and @hrogerson responded that she agreed as some of the best support can be found outside of the department. And @miss_m_w said that new subject leaders should make opportunities to meet with other subject leaders to share successes and ways to deal with issues.

@specialsciteach said that she was allowed to find her way with a guiding hand in the background: a new post holder needs to be able to make their own decisions, with support.

@hrogerson said that as a line manager of new post holders she would give them something achievable to work towards, that a newly appointed subject leader may not know what their job entails and direction from the line manager is important.

Other advice:

@obeolizzy said that new subject leaders should look at work of R. Driver, R.

Millar, J. Osborne, P. Scott, R. Watson, D.West, J.Wellington, R.Duschl, P. Adey, et al. In other tweet she said that subject leaders should attend ASE conferences.

@heatherakane tweeted that there has been a lot done by National Strategy on effective departments and new post holders should read them

@gregtheseal said that the NSLC aspiring heads of science course was the best CPD he had done. 

what makes a good science teacher?

Why tweet?

I don't usually like to write blogs posts about twitter. It all gets a bit circular when your main audience for the blog are people you connect with via twitter. However, over the weekend I have been gradually feeling the need to put something in writing.

Why are we tweeting? Really, honestly, deep down, why do we feel the need to go on to social media and make a comment?

I started with the TES forums. I was looking for a new job and miserable in my current role. I was also quite lonely. So I would read the job hunting forums and pay and conditions. I then grew to know members of the community and they became my "friends". Then I registered for a facebook account. This type of social media I do like; it helps connect me with my family (who are far away) and the friends I don't see very often.

I am not sure why I moved to twitter. I tried it because my partner was using it, but I didn't like it. Then I decided to have another go and found cleverfiend and teachingofsci, who I recognised from the TES forums as helpful people. The community of science teachers and other teachers grew.

The twitter community is on the whole very positive and it is full of teachers who want to improve their practice. But I am a glass half empty sort of person and I find it hard sometimes to deal with those who seem to self-congratulate and self-publicise.

But am I doing that too? Am I one of the twitter users who does it for personal gain?

I hope not.

My aim is to connect science teachers and make science teaching the best it can be. This is on a personal level, school level, regional level and national level. Because I am a science teacher and believe in teaching balanced science to all English school children.

It is bigger than me.

Twitter allows me to connect with the people I need to even be able to start to reach my aim, but it isn't the only thing I do because I am a member of the science teacher body the ASE and that is much more important that retweeting the thoughts of someone I believe will give me a "leg up".

So today I look at two sets of hashtags. The one that I feel part of #asechat and think that yes, I am making a difference and supporting science teachers (as they are definitely supporting me). The hash tag is a community. The people there are tweeting to share what they know and add to the knowledge floating in the ether, and in the knowledge that when they need support the community will give back.

And I look at another and think, why tweet? No community, no support, not adding anything new to the educational knowledge of followers, nothing but sound bites being put into a computer database, (adding to global warming). A lot of contributors tweeting for the sake of self-promotion.

But then, I am missing the point. Twitter is a microblogging site. It is there to allow you to say. "I am at a cafe drinking coffee", and the teachers collaborating was never the intention.

Using food in science lessons - some ideas.

I enjoying teaching the Edexcel Physics units called Good Enough to Eat and Spare Part Surgery. As I teach in an all-girls school I want to ensure that my practicals appeal to the girls and using food to illustrate physics principles manages that.

During this term I have used golden syrup to calculate viscosity and strawberry laces in a Hooke’s Law investigation. Using Crunchie bars to represent bones is also part of the scheme of work. The strawberry laces doesn’t need to be restricted to an A-level scheme of work, and could be used to extend Year 7 or primary students too. If you find the strawberry laces are not strong enough on their own then it is possible (if a bit sticky) to plait them to make them stronger. Of course, this also leads to a second possible experiment finding the relationship between ultimate tensile stress and number of strawberry laces used.

Some of the students I teach are from Hong Kong. Using sweets as props to go over the key language relating to material science has been very useful. One student explained to me that tough, strong and stiff all have the same meaning when using her translating device.

However, my experience using sweets doesn’t stop there. My step-daughter’s history teacher asked the class to create a model of a castle, she created one out of cake and biscuits, as cooking is turning into a big hobby of hers. This particularly caught my imagine when I saw the same thing being done by  science teachers when asking students to make a model cell cell cake via a link on pinterest and again when a student of a friend brought to school a “sweet” pathogen model. I am reliably informed that asking students (and indeed student teachers) to build models helps to bring out misconceptions. 

I have also seen “sweetie” blood produced by teachers in the past, a recipe I found on the internet suggests the following:

To represent plasma use water

To represent ions use sugar, salt, oil and protein shake mix 

To represent red blood cells use red jelly beans

To represent white blood cells use mini marshmallows and

To represent platelets use white rice.

A colleague has also used sweets to create models of the atom, including strawberry laces for electron shells. A different version is shown in the image to the left.

I have been using golden syrup in other ways to demonstrate the movement of plate tectonics using biscuits on golden syrup. This is an idea from the website: http://www.earthlearningidea.com. 

I feel that it shows brilliantly how the tectonic plates move slowly as it is difficult to see the pieces of biscuit move, yet taking a photo on a digital camera before and after can show the the pieces of biscuit do move. I have used this demonstration already this year with a group of Year 6 students who are following the theme of “underground”.

Physics Experiments

Asking colleagues and searching the Internet has revealed a huge number of science experiments that either involved food directly or have an alternative that uses foodstuffs and sweets.

Several colleagues use skittles or (chocolate) M&Ms to model radioactive decay. This is especially useful if the school doesn’t have enough dice to share between the students and overcomes the issue of students putting the dice that have “decayed” back in with the “unstable” dice, as the students will eat those that land writing-side up. An alternative is to use ditalini pasta, which students would not be as keen to eat and disrupt the lesson.

Measuring the speed of light is possible using a microwave with the turntable turned upside-down to disable the turning effect. For those who haven’t seen this experiment, the standing waves inside the microwave cause two melted spots on a slab of chocolate (cheese slices can also be used). The melted spots are half a wavelength apart. The frequency of the microwaves can either be found in the manual or on a sticker on the back. Speed of light = frequency x wavelength.

Putting marshmallows into a vacuum flask and pumping out the air is a great way to demonstrate the effects of air pressure.

The National STEM centre has a great video explanation by Alom Shaha of the jelly baby wave machine here: http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/resource/2096/wave-machine A brilliant way to demonstrate transverse waves and their properties.

Not quite sweets, but I also love demonstrating the luminescence of tonic water under UV light, tap water doesn’t glow.

Lastly in my list of possible physics experiments a colleague has suggested using Oreos (as an alternative to jaffa cakes) to model the phases of the moon.

Creativity in Biology

During my career I haven’t taught many biology units, so I turned to my colleagues and friends for ideas of where sweets can be used during biology practical activities:

It is possible to create DNA from sweets as the image above shows. There are various different methods for this activity.

And http://cmaste.ualberta.ca/en/Outreach/AlbertaIngenuityResources/~/media/cmaste/Documents/Outreach/AlbertaIngenuityResources/Carbohydrate/AICCSLabActivityCandyBloodCells08.pdf is a link to a worksheet for an activity using sweets to model antibodies and antigens. 

It is possible to use gummy bears in osmosis experiments by measuring the gummy bear before and after immersing in water and salt water.

An example I have used is using sweets as san object for Year 7 students to use and write keys about in their classification modules. Quality street are good for this, or Dolly Mixtures if you are on a budget. It gives something a little more interesting than lab equipment or pictures of aliens. 

A popular experiment with interesting results is investigating the effect of pH on chicken bones. 

A lot of my biology teacher friends talk about “Reebots”. The Reebops activity helps to demonstrate how genetics is responsible both for similarities and variation among members of the same species. There is a worksheet here: http://www.bioedonline.org/resources/files/bcm-reebops.pdf and the practical biology website has a good example too. 

Chemistry Practical Activities

If you use the Wikid scheme of work in Year 7 then you will be aware that there is an entire scheme of work dedicated to food called “Cook”. Some of the topics covered relate to heat transfer and change of state, but students also get to make ice cream, investigate British vs American pancakes and look at cooking in the context of physical and chemical changes. I am a big fan of the majority of the wikid scheme.

Using food as a context for science is not just restricted to key stage 3. I teach the OCR Gateway specification at GCSE and there are sections of the first chemistry module dedicated to the chemistry of cooking. 

One of the examples involves baking powder. Instead of heating and showing the decomposition of sodium hydrogen carbonate, it is also possible to make sponge cakes in the microwave during a lesson with and without baking powder to demonstrate the purpose of adding baking powder when baking cakes.

I love carrying out the experiment where the students boil potato and see who it’s consistency changes with time and I demonstrate cooking pieces of potato in a microwave. I enjoy it because the potato usually gets so dry it sets on fire in the microwave, which excites the students. 

The scheme of work also involves students using egg white as an emulsifier.

This term Year 7 have been studying Acids and Alkalis and there are a lot of links to food in the this topic. Whether it be eating foods to establish that acids are sour, to investigating the perfect sherbet recipe, my students have found the link between chemistry and real life interesting at this early stage in tehir secondary education. I also really enjoy the lessons where students test different vegetables to see which one makes the best indicator. (I really like Ribena, but it isn’t as fun as making indicator using red cabbage).

Of course there are lots of “kitchen chemsitry” experiments that involve food, from volcanoes to making invisible ink and creating crystals with sugar. See http://chemistry.about.com/od/foodcookingchemistry/tp/kitchenscienceexperiments.htm for more ideas.

A big favourite of a chemistry teacher colleague of mine is making elephant dung using concentrated sulphuric acid and sugar.

Practical Investigations

A colleague told me of an experiment she carried out with a class to establish if a Jaffa Cake is a cake or a biscuit. Cakes get drier as they get older and biscuits go soggy. 

Using food is a great way to engage students in science.